


Debts Owed

by 27dragons, tisfan



Series: Imagine Tony and Bucky 2016/2017 [33]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Bucky Barnes's Metal Arm, Canon-Typical Violence, Dwarf Culture & Customs, Elves, Gnomes, Hydra (Marvel), Loki Does What He Wants, M/M, Magic, Mild Gore, Tony Stark Has A Heart, cut off one head, like the monster, tinker gnomes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-14
Updated: 2017-10-14
Packaged: 2019-01-15 07:30:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12316578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/27dragons/pseuds/27dragons, https://archiveofourown.org/users/tisfan/pseuds/tisfan
Summary: Time is running out for Tony Stark. His magical tinkered heart is in the possession of the evil wizard, Stane.Enter the paladin, Steve, dwarven Bucky, tinker gnome Tony, and the rest of the stalwart adventurers to recover Tony's heart and stop Stane's plans...They didn't count on a big, many-headed problem getting in the way.





	Debts Owed

**Author's Note:**

> for rinrinp42 Kinda vague, but a non-human d&d au where Tony and Bucky have to work together for a quest?

“Aw, boots, no,” Clint complained. The elven ranger sighed, staring down at his footwear that was ruined by the puddles of stagnant water that pooled against the cavern floor. “Why is it always dark, dank, moldy, disgusting caves where the bad guys go to hide? Just once, I’d like to get into a nice, clean fight in the sunlight, with trees and chirping birds and--”

“Head in the fight!” Steve barked. The paladin blocked a striking hydra head with his enchanted shield. He severed the neck with his sword, and stepped back so that Natasha could dance in with the torches she was wielding instead of her usual knives to cauterize the wound.

“‘Tis not a lack of heads in the fight that we suffer from, Captain,” Thor bellowed. Before the beast had finally burst free of the cavern where it lay hid, the group had suffered from the impression that they were under attack from a large group of serpents. By the time they figured it out, the Hydra was top-heavy with four extra heads. Thor was battering away at one head with his magical hammer, while his brother Loki cowered behind him and occasionally shot jagged bolts of green flame in the monster’s direction. “Allfather Odin! I call on you --” And there went Thor, praying again “--to give might to my arm and that of my companions, to bless us in our endeavours against… this foul. Stinking. Revolting. Monstrous.--”

“That’s enough adjectives, brother,” Loki said. “I’m sure Allfather gets the point.”

Tony dodged the beast’s tail and scampered to where the dwarf Bucky was clashing with two heads at once. “This isn’t fast enough!” the gnome complained, even as he lined up a shot with his hastily-modified blaster. “Stane’s going to get away from us _again_!”

“Well,” Bucky said, hefting one of his weapons, “I’ll just _axe_ him to stick around, shall I?” He knew Tony would roll his eyes at that, even in the midst of battle, in the middle of his rage and anxiety. He hacked at the mostly severed neck of the hydra head nearest him. The head dropped, spurting black blood everywhere.

Bucky tossed his war-axe from one hand to the other, grabbed the flask from his hip and guzzled a mouthful of pure dwarven mulekick. He flicked the brass and steel device Tony had given him months ago -- a flame-maker -- and spat, spraying the highly-flammable booze all over the stumpy neck and searing the flesh before it could generate more heads. “Waste of perfectly good drink,” he muttered, wiping the remnants out of his beard. He was very proud of his beard, all of a quarter of a thumbwidth long. Two seasons ago, he’d been as clean-faced as a boy, so even the tiny bit of scruffle was a sign of his impending maturity.

“I’ll buy you a fresh flask as soon as we get back to town and I’m not dying anymore!” Tony promised. “There’s got to be a faster way to do this!”

“Feel free to speak up if you have any ideas,” Natasha chimed in. She _hated_ being relegated to backup and support roles, but she was the only one fast enough to keep up with both Steve’s and Clint’s kills.

“Got eyes on Stane,” Clint reported, doing that freaky elf-thing where he was dancing along the back of the hydra, jumping from head to head with ease and firing arrows by the bushel basket.

“Well don’t just stand there, shoot him!” Tony demanded.

“Get the beast to open a mouth,” Loki said. Thor was practically carrying him; the young mage was powerful, but easily wearied. “Natasha, throw this down its throat.” He handed her a packet; Bucky’d seen dozens of those little packets, they held Loki’s spell components and were stored carefully in a waxed and enchanted leather bag, to keep them safe.

“I am shooting him!” Clint yelled back. “What do you think I am doing up here? Getting altitude so that I can yodel? That armor of his is thick as dragonhide.”

“We _can’t_ let him get away this time!” Tony said, a hint of desperation slipping through his usually composed demeanor. “My backup heart won’t last much longer!”

“We won’t let you die, Tony,” Steve promised, sounding all sincere and paladin-y.

Tony didn’t respond to that. He was too busy peering under the Hydra’s legs. “I can get to him,” he told Bucky in a voice low enough not to carry over the hydra’s roaring and the others’ shouting. “But I need him distracted while I disable his armor.”

“If there’s one thing I’m good at, doll,” Bucky said, “it’s bein’ distractin’.” He did trajectory calculations in his head -- his father, and his grandfather, and his great-grandmother before him had all manned ballistas and catapults in the days of the Great War. Arc and trajectory were in his blood and bones.

“Steve! Shield!” he roared, getting a running start.

The paladin glanced over the situation, his keen eye putting all the pieces together in an instant. “Right.” He faced Bucky, trusting Natasha’s fiery brands to protect him for the moment, and angled his shield toward the dwarf.

Bucky was no elf, but a short (ha ha, bad joke) leap he could manage. He landed on his toes on Steve’s shield and the paladin launched him upward. Bucky tucked and rolled with the momentum, barely missing scraping his head on the roof of the cavern (that would be first in dwarven history and he almost regretted the lost opportunity) and he touched down on the Hydra’s back.

How in the nine realms did Clint do that, Bucky wondered, irritably, as he stumbled and fumbled his way down the beast’s back, dodged the lashing tail and ended up with his boots firmly back on the ground where they belonged.

“Dwarves,” he announced, “were not meant for flyin’. Oi! Stane!”

They were lucky in that the cavern had partially collapsed in the southern quadrant when the Hydra came up; Stane was still trying to clear enough debris to get to the tunnel. Bucky’s dwarven senses told him there was only perhaps another four or five arm’s length to clear before he’d be free to run down the tunnels, and even a dwarf’s keen sense of underground design, they’d probably lose him.

And then, they’d lose Tony. There was an odd, squeezing pain in Bucky’s chest at that thought. When they’d first put together their band of heroes for hire -- Steve was the main catalyst for that -- Bucky admitted to some dubiousness over the little gnome, absent-minded, sarcastic, insanely wealthy, and, to be fair, just insane. But Tony had proven himself useful, heroic, and… if Bucky had to admit it, and maybe he should, if only to himself, kinda cute.

Speaking of… where was Tony?

Tony ran straight under the hydra, his tiny body twisting and flipping around its flailing limbs, and rolled up to a stop just behind Stane. From his bottomless bag of tricks he pulled a gizmo that looked something like a metal arm, and aimed it toward Stane. The arm extended, even as Stane gestured and mouthed a spell that was bound to mean trouble for Bucky.

Stane’s spell released in an explosion of vile red power, but not before Tony’s gizmo had unfastened the catches of his armor, making it slip down, exposing the wizard’s chest and dropping his belt to the cavern floor.

The armor’s removal caused Stane’s hand to jerk, the blast went wild. Bucky tracked it, automatically. It struck one of the huge stalactites that dripped down from the roof; there had been dozens when they arrived, but this one, so far, had resisted falling prey to the writhing Hydra. No more. It was going to come down. Bucky scrambled for the nearest shelter; that much rock coming down was going to be ugly. “Get clear, get clear!” He yelled, waving frantically at Tony, who was busy with Stane.

Tony ignored Bucky’s warning, intent on the fallen belt which surely held Tony’s heart among the spell components. He dove for it, but failed to grab it, succeeding only in knocking it out of Stane’s reach. “Blast!” He scrambled for it, kicking at Stane’s legs.

Bucky could see everything in that second; the way the roof was going to come down, the way Stane and Tony and Tony’s heart were all going to be crushed. The path was very, very clear. He didn’t hesitate.

Dwarves were natural sprinters, is what Bucky’s Uncle Gimli had always said. Wasted on cross-country. He only needed to run twenty lengths of a man laying down. Bucky ran. He ran like he’d never run before, not even when that entire horde of goblins were chasing them, and Clint had mocked that he only needed to outrun the dwarf.

The stone floor was flat, almost polished toward the rear of the cavern. Bucky threw himself down, momentum sliding him across. Snag, and he grabbed the belt of components. Slid further and knocked Stane’s legs out from under him.

Scrambled to his feet ad got an arm around Tony. The gnome was short, slender. Barely weighed more than a sack of grain. The ceiling was coming down in chunks all around them. A huge, gaping crack opened in the floor.

_Shit._

Bucky pinwheeled to a stop, Tony still thrown over his shoulder like a child. The edging of the cavern was steady, a deep root of bedrock underneath. Half the rest of the floor was going to go at any moment.

And dwarves... Dwarves couldn’t jump. On the few occasions it had been a problem, Steve usually tossed Bucky, but Steve… Steve was on the other side of the Hydra, which was going through its death throes and probably not helping with cavern stability at all.

“Go, go,” Bucky said. “Tie on a rope on the other side, hurry.”

He grabbed Tony by the belt and the back of his thick vest, swung, and threw him across the crevasse, not even breathing for fear until Tony rolled, fetching up against the cavern wall.

Tony didn’t stop to catch his breath, but scrabbled at his belt for a length of rope and tied it with quick, deft movements to an outcrop. He wound up to throw it back across the gap to Bucky.

Behind him, Stane was climbing back to his feet, cursing... No, make that _cursing_.

Trajectory and arc.

Tony was the target. Bucky would live, and all he had to do was _nothing_.

He knew he wouldn’t make it across the chasm, it was too far. But he might be able to land on the slight outcropping, about twenty feet below. He jumped. The curse hit him, a glancing blow, striking his shoulder. Pain, brilliant, blinding pain, seared through his left arm.

The cavern roof collapsed; a million tons of rock and dust came down on Stane’s head.

The blackness of the chasm below was a soft, cold comfort. Bucky tumbled in and let gravity take him… Tony’s screaming followed him into the dark.

***

“No!!!” Tony screamed. Not Bucky, gods of Light, _not Bucky_. He scrambled for the edge of the chasm, not caring about the aftershocks still shaking the ground, not caring about the flailing of the hydra, or even about his heart that Bucky had been holding.

Light, he needed... He fumbled in his bag until he found a lantern and shone it over the edge, terror pounding cold through his veins.

 _Don’t get attached to the Bigs_ , his mother had told him, but he hadn’t listened. He’d grown to love his friends -- Steve’s easy sincerity and Clint’s ready jokes and Natasha’s quick wit and Thor’s good humor and even Loki’s cleverness. But most of all, _most of all_ , he’d come to love Bucky, steadfast and true, reliable in a way that Bigs seldom were.

The light reached down and there was Bucky, lying in a pool of oh, god, so much blood. One arm was outstretched, Tony’s heart shining like a beacon in its grasp. “No,” Tony said again, barely a whisper. What use was his heart if Bucky was gone?

He checked his rope -- the least they could do was see Bucky’s body returned to his home, buried properly -- and swung over the side, shimmying down to the ledge where Bucky had landed.

Closer, the stench of the blood was unbearable, and he could see the pulpy mess that was all that was left of Bucky’s left arm, which must have borne the brunt of not one but several impacts. Tony choked back bile; he had more important things to do first. He wasn’t strong, but he could sling Bucky to his back and have one of the others pull them up.

But when he rolled Bucky over, the dwarf’s breath hitched with pain, and Tony’s eyes nearly fell out, they felt so wide. “Bucky!”

“Tony?” Bucky’s eyes were open, but they flittered around like he couldn’t see. “Tony.. z’at you?”

“It’s me, I’m here,” Tony babbled. Change of plan, right. He wrapped the rope around the stump of Bucky’s shoulder to make a tourniquet, though he didn’t know if he was strong enough to make it tight. “Thor!” he yelled. “Come fast! We need your healing at once!”

“I got it, doll,” Bucky said. He’d started their adventures by saying Tony was no bigger than a doll, and what use did they have for children’s toys in the wild, but it had become more… affectionate than that, over time. “Your heart. _I got it._ Take it. Before I go home t’ meet the Gods.”

“Don’t you _dare_ ,” Tony scolded. “You weren’t supposed to _die_ to get it back, you stupid Big! I don’t even _want_ it if you’re going to leave me!” He was aware that he sounded like a petulant child, but he didn’t care. Whatever it took to make Bucky stay with him. “Thor!”

“Well, gotta say, it wasn’t the plan,” Bucky pointed out. “You gonna miss me, doll? Give us a kiss to bear me away. Always… it was always you…” His face contorted with agony, blood still spurting, despite the tourniquet.

“Bucky, don’t talk like that,” Tony panted. “Stay, and I’ll give you all the kisses you want. Wanted to kiss you for months now, anyway, just... just _stay with me_.” He tried to tighten the tourniquet, but it was useless. Stupid gnome; he should have a device for this! He would get right on that, as soon as they were back to civilization, as soon as he could sit and think about anything but the way Bucky’s skin was growing pale.

Loki’s pretty face -- not so pretty when covered with sweat and dirt and blood -- peered over the side. “Hold fast to him, tinkerer, and I shall lift you both out of the pit.” Beyond Loki, Tony could hear Clint and Nat arguing, as they often did.

“So, your grand idea is to wrap us all up in your web arrows and stick us to the wall? Thanks, Spiderman.”

“I’m not Spiderman!” Clint protested. “No one knows who Spiderman is! It’s certainly not me. Maybe it’s you. I’ve never seen you and Spiderman in a room at the same time!”

Loki’s power always felt unpleasant over Tony’s skin, like licking a battery, a jolt and buzz and tingle as it wrapped itself around them. Just in time, the veil of weightlessness draped around them and the ledge they were resting on crumbled and dropped into the abyss below. Loki strained, lifting his arm and they moved in response to his will. He backed away from the ledge and drew the two up and out. The mage went to his knees, panting for breath and let them drift gently to rest on the solid ground.

“Luckily, neither of you weigh so much as two men, or I’d not be able to lift you,” Loki said, thin chest heaving for air.

“Clear a space for the gods to work,” Thor bellowed. He went to one knee at Bucky’s side and placed a thick, powerful hand over the dwarf’s chest. “I pray to thee, Allfather Odin, to heal this dwarf of wounds obtained because he was _too slow to get out of the way_.”

“He wasn’t!” Tony argued. “He _was_ out of the way and he jumped into it to save me!” His chest hadn’t ached so fiercely since Stane had stolen his heart and he’d been forced to switch it out for the old one, the one that was slowly killing him... He took Bucky’s hand and rubbed it. “Why isn’t it getting better?”

Loki was already on his feet; the mage never could stay in one place when there were mystical items to examine. He’d taken Stane’s belt and was thumbing through the thick tome that--

“I see and I understand,” Loki proclaimed. “Here, brother, let me slow the passage of time, that we may confer on what best to do.” Loki pulled a single crystal rod from his own set of pouches and pockets. “Tony, let him go, lest you be caught up in the spell. We shall need, I think, your expertise. Steven, take Nat and Clint; explore the tunnels. According to the maps we saw, there should be a dwarven forge nearby. Get it going and come back for us.”

Loki turned to Thor and Tony. “The wound is cursed; with the loss of his arm, it cannot be healed. I will place him in an amber sleep. Time will have no meaning for him, until we can fashion him a new one.”

Breath caught in Tony’s throat. “A new one?” He glanced toward Bucky, and then looked back at the brothers. “If this is another one of your _tricks_ , Loki...” He knew the mage didn’t take him seriously, but he would _destroy_ Loki if this was just a way to poke fun at Bucky, or worse.

“A new arm,” Loki said. He gave Tony a serious glance. “You can do this? Fully articulated, functional. We shall use it; Thor can bond it to his shoulder, and I can enspell it, to work as well as his flesh and blood arm. It will confuse the curse. It will not _end_ the curse, but it will give us time.” He stretched forward one pale, long-fingered hand. “I do this to help heal him. You can trust me in this.”

It was Bucky’s only chance. Thor would have said, already, if he were able to lift the curse with the power of his All-Father. Tony hesitated only a moment longer, then nodded, reached out to lay his hand over Loki’s. “I can do this,” he agreed. “It will be better than _functional_. It will be _magnificent_.”

Loki nodded. He broke the crystal over Bucky. The dwarf took one, last shuddering breath and stopped. Everything stopped. His breathing, the bleeding, the soft pained moans he was making. Frozen, perfectly, between one moment and the next.

Loki took a flat, round stone from out of his pouch and placed it on the ground. “Get up, you,” he told it, prodding at it with a booted toe. “We have work to do.” The stone, Tony could have sworn, _humphed_ , offended. It slid under Bucky and lifted him, hovering at about Loki’s knee. “Give him a push, Tony, and let’s find the forge. We have much work to do.”

***

The sounds and heat of the forge was familiar; the glowing orange light shed from the coals a comfort. The Outsiders always thought of the dwarven mines as cold and lifeless, dark and silent, but Bucky knew they were full of light and love, warmth and wonder. He snuggled deeper into his bed. He was awake, but he was not yet ready to face the day. His brothers and sisters would rouse him soon enough. There was work to be done. His mother would be at the forge already, foredwarf for a huge task-force. Father would be at the fire, cooking breakfast. Bacon and eggs, grilled mushrooms and small beer. Fresh rolls, with butter. Mmmm…

He inhaled, trying to smell the first hints of breakfast. Odd that there was… nothing.

He opened his eyes. Instead of the round, smooth ceiling of his hearthroom, there was an endless vaulted ceiling above him; ancient dwarven work.

Bucky sat up, raising his hands to rub at his eyes and stopped again.

“By the _gods_ ,” he gasped. What… what had _been done_ to him? One hand he knew as well as he ever had, work-rough and strong. Except his hand looked almost soft, as if he’d been months away from work. The other… dear gods…

The other was gleaming metal, silvery and strange. It moved at his command, seamless as his arm had ever been. He clenched a fist and watched glittery fingers, reflecting the light of the forge, close.  

“Bucky?” The voice was familiar, even if Bucky couldn’t quite place it, and small with uncertainty. “Are you awake?”

“What… what _happened_ to me?” Bucky’s voice had no power behind it, shock had robbed him of his lungs. He was panting for air and there was no air, turning his strange metal arm over and over, trying to understand.

“You don’t remember?” The voice belonged to a gnome, hovering hesitantly nearby, between Bucky and the light of the forge. “Nothing? What... Do you know me?”

There was… something. It niggled and wriggled in Bucky’s brain. Like a worm on a flat rock. He couldn’t see the gnome, he was standing in the shadow, the light behind him. “I… _what is this_?” He held up the arm, fingers spread wide. “Is it… me?”

“That’s... a question for the gods,” the gnome said. He took a hesitant step forward. “You were hit with a curse that was meant for me, and your arm... You lost the arm. We would have lost you altogether, but...” He took a gulping breath. “The curse is still in you, in your shoulder. Loki’s been studying it, and he has ideas of how we can get it removed, but in the meantime...” He gestured. “It should work like your real arm. I made it, and Thor attached it, and Loki animated it.”

Bucky stretched it, worked the fingers, one at a time. Reached out, grasped the gnome’s wrist and tugged him closer. Out of the shadow and into the light. “You made this? For me?”

There was a strange light coming from the gnome’s chest, hidden by a vest, but peeking over the edges. Bucky raised the metal fingers and tapped the gnome’s chest, just over the strongest point of the glow. Metal against metal. The gnome’s heart. A mechanical creation, a wonder of magic and steel.

Bucky inhaled as the rush of memory flooded him. “Tony!”

Tony gasped. “You remember,” he said, slumping in relief. “Oh, Bucky. Thank the gods.”

“You made this?” Bucky turned the arm again. “Well, of course I remember. Dwarves always pay their debts. And they remember _a debt owed them_.” He gave Tony a fierce glare.

Tony didn’t seem the least bit put off by the glare. He stepped closer, mouth curving into a smile under his small, neat mustache. “Do you, now? That must be something we have in common, you know. Gnomes are excellent accountants, very precise in our calculations.”

“Think someone denied me a death kiss,” Bucky said. His stomach was in knots; maybe Tony had just made that up, had been terrified and panicking about losing a companion. “That I might stay. And get all the kisses I wanted.” He made a grand gesture at himself, the bed, and the sly, adorable gnome in front of him. “I _stayed_.”

Tony took another step closer, close enough now for Bucky to feel his breath. “So you did,” Tony agreed. “And a Stark always pays his debts.” His chin tipped up, inviting. “How would you like to begin?”

Bucky thought it was oddly fitting, as he’d one held Tony’s heart in his hand, that he use the new hand that Tony made him to draw the gnome closer. His lips were so close to Tony’s that he could feel the way they quivered with anticipation. “You were terribly unspecific,” he cautioned. “All that I want… may take th’ rest of our lives to get to.”

Tony huffed. “I,” he said fussily, “am an engineer, and I am nothing if not _precisely exact_ in my terms. I offered what I intended to offer. No more, and certainly no less.”

Bucky’s mouth slotted to meet Tony’s lips. Those wide, lush lips, barely parted, but begging for his kiss. He didn’t resist that siren’s call; didn’t even try.

Tony tasted like steel and fire, like bronze and bravery. The thought exploded through him with the force of a powderkeg bomb. He lifted his hands, both of them, to cup Tony’s face, to cradle it. He ran his tongue over Tony’s bottom lip, and when he gasped, Bucky didn’t hesitate, delving the depths of that mine with eagerness.

Tony’s arms came around him, clenching, as Tony’s mouth fell open, eager and hungry for Bucky’s kiss. “Oh,” he said when Bucky pulled away, and would spend years denying that it came out as a squeak. “Oh, that’s... that’s even better than I thought it would be.”

There was a stirring in his blood and heat in his bones. Bucky tugged Tony off balance; they had this nice, convenient, comfortable bed right here, and apparently nothing urgent to do. He swallowed hard, then pulled Tony closer, tumbling the gnome into the bed with him. “Come here, my treasure,” Bucky said, “an’ I’ll do m’ best to put all your dreams t’ shame. You said kisses… I never specified _where_ I was gonna kiss you.”

**Author's Note:**

> The Party
> 
> Tony -- gnome tinkerer  
> Bucky -- dwarf warrior  
> Steve -- human paladin  
> Nat -- halfling rogue  
> Clint -- elf ranger  
> Thor -- human cleric of the All-Father  
> Loki -- human mage
> 
> Just to be clear, we're thinking Peter Jackson dwarves... Bucky with his beard just barely coming in, like Kili...


End file.
